Cameron vows to defeat Daesh

PM defends Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 after media unmasks ‘Jihadi John’

Prime Minister David Cameron vowed to defeat militants and defended Britain’s secret services on Friday after media reports named Daesh executioner “Jihadi John” as London graduate Mohammad Emwazi.

“We will do everything we can with the police, the security services, with all that we have at our disposal, to find these people and put them out of action,” Cameron said at a press conference in Wales.

“Jihadi John”, believed to be responsible for beheading at least five Western hostages, was identified on Thursday by media and experts as a Kuwaiti-born computing graduate who had lived in London since the age of six.

As families of the slain hostages were calling for justice, Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 came under scrutiny following revelations Emwazi had been known to security services for several years.

Slipped the net

“I work very closely with our security services, I meet with them regularly, I ask them searching questions about what they do,” Cameron said.

“While we are in the middle of this vast effort to make sure British citizens are safe, the most important thing is to get behind them,” he added.

Campaign group Cage said MI5 had been tracking Emwazi, aged in his mid-20s, since at least 2009.

“MI5 blunders that allowed Jihadi John to slip the net,” read a headline in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, while the Daily Mail asked: “On the MI5 watch list, so how could he escape to Syria?”

“One of the difficulties here is that you can’t keep an eye on everyone all the time,” Menzies Campbell, a member of parliament’s intelligence and security committee, told BBC radio’s Today programme.

But he said lawmakers would look into the questions raised, adding: “There’s no doubt that from time to time the security services have got to prioritise those upon whom they are conducting surveillance”.

Campbell drew a parallel with a case that was investigated by the committee — the killing of British soldier Lee Rigby in a London street in 2013 by two home-grown British Islamist extremists.

Asked if Cameron was concerned about Emwazi’s name being reported, a spokeswoman for his office said: “The prime minister would be concerned about information being put into the public domain at any time that might jeopardise ongoing police or security investigations or the safety of British citizens”.

London mayor Boris Johnson meanwhile accused Cage of “an apology for terror” for blaming Emwazi’s radicalisation on his alleged detention and “harassment” by the British security services.

Cage said he had become radicalised on a post-graduation trip to Tanzania in 2009.

“It was incredible that people could stand up and pretend that somehow it was the fault of the security forces,” Johnson said.

“I think that is beyond satire and amounts to nothing less than an apology for terror.”

❝ We will do everything we can with the police, the security services, with all that we have at our disposal, to find these people and put them out of action.” David Cameron | British Prime Minister